Titus Lautus, our adjutant, had sent out a hunting party to look for fresh meat. If they had arrived two minutes later, that's just what we'd have been. As it was, they'd seen us on the hillside on the other side of the valley, and although they didn't know why we were running so hard, they'd come down at the double.
Britannicus was unconscious, but he wasn't bleeding, except from the nose, and as far as we could tell he had only been knocked out by the force of the blow on his helmet. God knows the whoreson who swung it had been big enough! He was the one who had eaten my sword.
Two of the hostiles were still alive, but one of the newcomers soon set that right. I started to say something to the decurion in charge of the hunting party, but everything went red and I threw up. That was the one consistent result of my grandmother's efforts to keep me spiritually whole. When I had finished, I returned my attention to the decurion. Thinking back on it later, I had to give all of them full marks for the discipline of their faces. Not one man among them gave any indication that he might have been surprised to discover that a centurion of their cohort could be human enough to be sick.
"How many of you are there?"
"Two squads, Centurion. Twenty, plus myself."
"Cavalry?"
"None, Centurion."
"Well, I'm glad you got here. Now we have to get back. How far are we from camp?"
"About two miles, Centurion."
"Good. The Tribune is in bad shape. Bring me that chariot with the four horses. I'll drive. Make the Tribune as comfortable as possible, and have one of your men collect our horses and walk them. Is the Tribune's horse all right?"
"It seems to be, Centurion. Nothing broken. Both of them are pretty well blown, though."
"They have every right to be. All right, let's get out of here as quickly and as quietly as possible."
The young decurion was frowning. "What's going on, Centurion? Who are these people? Where did they come from?"
I looked at him in surprise. He wasn't very old. "Where in Hades d'you think they came from, lad? They came over the bastard Wall, that's where they came from!" He looked stunned. "What's your name?"
"Strato, Centurion. Decius Strato."
"Well, Decurion Strato, the barbarian, the enemy that you've spent the last few years training to fight against, has come over the Wall in strength. In great strength. We're in the middle of a full-scale surprise offensive. An invasion. And we've been caught squatting. Do you understand?" He nodded as I went on. "The best thing we can do right now is get back to camp and hold it, if we can, until our Tribune here comes back to the land of the living." Many things I have been unable to remember about that day, but I remember seeing then in that decurion's eyes the realization of what I was talking about.
We placed Britannicus on the bed of the four-horse chariot and I drove. I aimed the four horses at the top of that hill and they climbed it at a walk, so that our infantry rescuers had no trouble in keeping up with us. We made it back to the camp without any further contact with the enemy. Britannicus started to show signs of awakening shortly after we set out, but he was hurting badly and was in no hurry to regain consciousness. There was no great amount of room on the floor of the chariot, so I straddled him as he half lay, half sat in the body of the vehicle. When he began to come to, he started to thrash about a bit, and I think I kicked him once to settle him down. Anyway, he came out of it gradually and began to make efforts to stand up, and by the time we came in sight of the camp he was in command of himself again. When we rode through the gates, he was holding the reins.
Word of the attack had preceded us. The sentries spotted us while we were still a long way from the gates, and I could see from the activity that they knew what was happening. Flavinius, the second in command, had his wits about him, as always, and the entire garrison was standing to. Fully half the cohort, five hundred men, were hard at work strengthening the camp's defences, digging the surrounding ditch deeper and throwing the earthworks higher.
Britannicus was as white as death and must have had the earth mother of all headaches, but he called an immediate meeting of all centurions and officers, and informed everyone of the day's developments as far as he could. One of the first things he asked about, after informing them of the breakthrough, was the number of fleeing soldiers who had made their way into camp from the Wall. He was told there were none. He winced, dropped his eyes in thought for a minute and then shrugged, dismissing the thought, whatever it might have been, and got down to business. And Britannicus knew his business.
Because we were on the march, there was a detailed inventory of supplies on hand: the quantities and types of rations, weapons, wagons and all of the thousand details that keep an army unit functioning, no matter what its size may be. He reeled off allocations of supplies and detailed his orders for emergency procedures, including an intensified guard schedule that involved a four hours on, four off cycle for every man in the camp. He made every one of his listeners aware that the demands of the present emergency would mean that everyone must stand prepared to adapt at any time to new orders. He was dealing with defensive manoeuvres when the alarm sounded; a party of hostiles had been sighted by our sentries. He dismissed the meeting, calling on me as pilus prior, senior centurion of the cohort, to stay behind with his four senior officers. He did not speak until everyone else had left the tent, and even then he stood silent, chewing reflectively on his top lip for long moments and ignoring us all completely. Finally he snapped out of his reverie and drew himself erect, after which he looked closely and searchingly at each of us in turn. We waited, making no attempt to second-guess him. Apparently satisfied with what he had seen in our faces, he nodded to himself and sighed noisily, blowing his pent-up breath out explosively.
"Gentlemen," he said, as though informing us of something he wanted attended to on parade the following day, "I have a feeling that what we are witnessing is only the beginning of something bigger than any of us have visualized. Something is out of kilter here, badly out of balance. This is not for discussion without these walls, but mark my words, we are going to be hard at this for a long time. This incursion is too big, too strong, to evaporate overnight." He turned his gaze fully on me. "For that reason, I intend to take some steps that might be described later as unique. I want a new maniple, Varrus, and I want it made up of the very best men in the Cohort. Your best, no less than a hundred of them — and more, a score more, if you can spare them. I want the fittest, strongest, ablest men you can muster, and I want them as quickly as you can get them together, you understand me?" I nodded, amazed, and he accepted my nod and turned his head to include the others in his conversation again. "These painted buffoons outside think they have beaten the Roman army. They don't know the difference between mercenaries, conscripts and regulars. They are about to be reminded of the standards that built the Roman Empire." He stepped forward to his folding table and reached into one of its drawers, taking out a small throwing-knife, which he tucked up into the right sleeve of his tunic. Then he moved towards the doorway of his tent, and we made to follow him. Before we could take the first step, however, he had stopped and was speaking again, to all of us.
"This Cohort is the finest in Britain, gentlemen. I know, because I made it that way. Our discipline is two hundred years and more out of date. In the next few days we'll put it into practice and show these people that the Wall wasn't built to protect us from them, but to save them from us. Let's go!"